1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parts exchange mechanism of a chip mounter, and particularly to techniques of exchanging parts of a chip mounter, such as a suction bit for sucking electronic parts, and a positioner for centering and positioning the electronic parts. These electronic parts are chip-shaped electronic parts such as semiconductor chips and mounted onto a printed circuit board by the chip mounter.
2. Related Art Statement
In general, there are a multiplicity of types of chip-shaped electronic parts differing in dimensions and shapes from one another. In order to mount the chip-shaped electronic parts having the multiplicity of types onto the printed circuit boards by one chip mounter, it is necessary to exchange, at least, a suction bit for sucking the chip-shaped electronic parts and a positioner for centering the chip-shaped electronic parts, in accordance with the dimensions and shapes of the electronic parts to be mounted.
To this end, in the common practice of the art, chip mounting work was temporarily suspended, and a suction bit and a positioner were changed separately by hand.
However, when there are many types of electronic parts to be mounted, it was extremely troublesome and complicated to manually carry out exchange of parts such as the suction bit and the positioner in accordance with the type of electronic parts mounted. Thus, efficiency of parts exchanging of the chip mounter were lowered, being great obstacle to automate chip mounting work from beginning to end.